Daze
by kakashifan9
Summary: Hizashi finds Shouta sitting outside of his apartment in the middle of the night, shaken from his hero work. He tries his best to comfort his best friend.


"Thank you for tuning in with me, my faithful listeners! I'll talk to you all next week on Put Your Hands Up Radio!" Hizashi said, waving his arms in front of his microphone enthusiastically.

After receiving a thumbs-up from his staff that he was officially off the air, Hizashi stretched his arms, sighing contently as he stood up from his chair. He exchanged a few pleasantries with his staff before heading to his locker to grab his bag.

Pulling out his cellphone, he noticed a single miss call flashing across his screen. Hizashi's eyebrows furrowed in concern when the call had been from Shouta's number. Shouta rarely called him, especially since he knew he would be on air until five in the morning for his radio show on Friday nights. His best friend never admitted it to him, but Hizashi knew that he listened to every single one of his segments. Whenever Hizashi talked about his radio show, Shouta could easily keep up, managing to even throw in some brash comments to make fun of him every now and then.

Hizashi unlocked his phone to return the call. After getting sent to Shouta's voice message system three times in a row, Hizashi sighed and decided to text him instead.

"I don't know why you even bother having a cellphone," Hizashi grumbled as he sent a quick message apologizing for missing Shouta's call during his radio show and asking why he had tried to contact him.

Hizashi couldn't wrestle down the feeling of worry in his stomach. Whenever the two had texted or called each other, it had always been Hizashi who had initiated the conversation. This routine had been going on between them for a year since they graduated high school. Hizashi was never bothered by this. If Shouta hadn't wanted to keep in contact with him, he could have easily ignored all of his messages. Receiving two-word responses from the erasure hero obviously meant that he was still a very important part of his life, a thought that made Hizashi's chest swell with pride.

Deciding that he would call again in a few hours after a nice nap, Hizashi thanked his staff before heading back to his apartment. He arrived home in fifteen minutes due to the streets being empty during this hour.

Humming a soft tune, he climbed the stairs to his front door, twirling his house keys around his index finger. Hizashi immediately noticed a figure sitting outside his door, a pair of yellow goggles illuminating around the man's forehead in the dim moonlight.

"Shouta? Is that you?!" Hizashi squeaked, running over to his best friend in apprehension. Shouta met his friend's concerned frown with a dazed expression, quietly whispering his name under his breath in greeting.

"What are you doing here? Is everything alright?!" Hizashi said, kneeling beside his friend. Panic began to settle in when he noticed blood staining Shouta's black jumpsuit. The corner of his lip was swollen, his hands covered in dirt and dried blood.

When Shouta noticed Hizashi sputtering over his appearance, he weakly shook his head.

"It's not mine," he quietly muttered in a low voice.

"What?" Hizashi lamely responded.

"The blood isn't mine," Shouta clarified in an even softer tone, hesitating slightly before adding, "Most of it isn't mine."

Hizashi bit the inside of his cheek, hooking his hand under his friend's underarm to pull him up. He figured that talking in the comfort of his apartment would be better than conversing on the hard cement floor.

"Let's clean you up," Hizashi offered as he helped Shouta to his feet. He didn't miss how his friend stumbled against him, shaking slightly against his hold.

Hizashi dug out a baggy t-shirt and some spare sweatpants before dragging Shouta into the bathroom with him. On a regular day when Shouta decided to crash at his place after hero work Hizashi would give his friend some privacy while he cleaned up. But right now Hizashi's instincts told him to stick close to him. He didn't know what was going on, but Shouta waiting outside his door in the middle of the night covered in blood set him on high alert.

Hizashi stripped his friend, leaving him only in his briefs as he instructed him to sit in the bathtub. Shouta quietly complied, sitting docilely with his knees pulled to his chest as Hizashi washed his hair and rinsed off the grime on his body with lavender scented soap. Just as Shouta had mentioned, most of the dried blood that washed off didn't belong to him. Aside from a few fresh bruises, Shouta had no major wounds.

Sighing softly in mild relief to the lack of physical injuries, Hizashi toweled his friend dry, even taking a few minutes to use a blow drier for his hair. He carefully helped his friend change into the fresh clothes he had prepared for him. Once he was satisfied, he took Shouta's arm and pulled him to the living room to let the erasure hero take a seat on the couch.

Shouta gave a soft huff as Hizashi threw a blanket around him.

"I'll go make you some tea," Hizashi murmured. As he busied himself in the kitchen, the silence was stifling. Usually the lack of conversation in the room wouldn't bother him. He was use to sharing the same space with his best friend and during the times when Hizashi wasn't talking his ear off, it was nice to be in a quiet room, enjoying the silence between them as they busied themselves with other mundane tasks.

But right now Hizashi felt suffocated. The sound of the kettle on the stove wasn't enough to calm his nerves. He pulled out Shouta's designated mug, carefully preparing his drink.

He poured in the hot water, throwing in a teabag to let it seep. Once he was satisfied with it, Hizashi made his way over to the erasure hero.

Afraid that his friend might accidentally spill the hot drink on himself, Hizashi decided to leave the mug on the coffee table in front of Shouta. His friend had been gazing at it, fixated on a single spot as he seemed to be lost in thought.

Shouta flinched slightly as Hizashi took a seat next to him, blinking his eyes rapidly as if he had only now noticed the voice hero beside him.

Hizashi smiled softly at his friend, hoping that it provided some sort of comfort. Shouta blinked owlishly at him, huddling into the blanket as his grey eyes trailed away from Hizashi's face and back to the coffee table.

When Shouta made no sign of speaking, Hizashi sighed and gently bumped his shoulder against his friend's.

"If you're not going to say anything, I will," Hizashi weakly jabbed. "And you know once I get started I can talk for hours on end. I hope you're prepared."

Shouta shrugged in response, choosing to lay his head against Hizashi's shoulder.

Not wanting to endure the silence for another minute, Hizashi did what he did best. He talked.

He talked about how his show went today and how he finally had time to read some fan letters on air. He mentioned the new coffee shop he had visited a few days ago and how his order was too bitter, but he was sure Shouta would have liked it. He flailed his arms as he brought up a cute dog he had ran into this morning that had been adamant on not letting Hizashi pet it, going as far as to jump into its owner's bag to escape from the voice hero.

As Hizashi rambled on about a new hair gel he was excited to try, he glanced at his friend. Shouta's eyes were half-lidded, seemingly unfocused as he leaned more heavily on Hizashi's shoulder.

Hizashi had probably been talking for twenty minutes straight. During that time he had started running his fingers through Shouta's soft black locks of hair, gently massaging his scalp. He absently thought about how the tea was getting cold when the steady stream of steam had ceased.

"…. And then I told the man to recycle his cup since it was biodegradable," Hizashi laughed, his voice vibrating against the walls of his apartment. As his laugh died down to a soft chuckle, Hizashi took a moment to tuck a stray piece of hair behind Shouta's ear.

"Do you want to crash on my bed tonight?" Hizashi softly asked.

Shouta hesitated.

"I'm comfortable here," he admitted in a quiet voice, pressing himself closer against Hizashi's side.

Hizashi hummed in response.

After a few minutes of silence, he felt Shouta shift against him, his hand coming up to his face to rub at his tired eyes with his palm.

"I could have saved him," he finally whispered in a small voice. "He was right in front of me. There was time."

Hizashi quietly listened to his friend, secretly relieved that Shouta wanted to talk about it. There was another long pause before Shouta spoke again.

"The villain had a knife to his throat. If I had been fast enough, I could have saved him," Shouta said, his voice hoarse from the strain of the memory.

Hizashi felt dread stirring in his chest as he threw an arm around his friend to give him a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder.

Shouta shook his head, anger flaring in his eyes for a brief moment as he ran his hand through his hair. He took a shuddering breath, breathing through his nose in an effort to calm himself.

"We practiced scenarios like this all the time. I should have been able to do something," Shouta said, irritation laced in his tone.

Hizashi bit his lip. Sure, they had gone through many simulations for hostage situations during their days at UA, but nothing could compare to the real world with its ever-changing twists and turns. Shouta probably already knew this. He was the most logical out of the two of them but experiencing the helplessness firsthand must have been traumatically different.

"Shouta," Hizashi delicately began, sighing when Shouta stiffened against him. "Please don't beat yourself up about this. As terrible as it seems now, things like this happen during our line of work. Even if you make all the right moves, sometimes it still won't work out."

"Heroes are suppose to do the impossible," Shouta weakly retorted, pulling the covers tighter against his body. "So why couldn't I?"

"Because heroes aren't perfect," Hizashi gently said. "There are some things that will be beyond our control. After they happen, all we can really do is learn from them to make sure that we don't repeat the same mistake."

Shouta didn't respond, huddling into himself as he hid behind his bangs.

"And no one learns faster than you," Hizashi continued, laying his cheek against Shouta's hair.

Hizashi always felt powerless during moments like these. The first time Shouta had came to his apartment uninvited in the middle of the night was when he had accidentally killed a villain, snapping the villain's neck with his capture weapon after trying to save them from a deadly fall. Hizashi had forced Shouta to sleep over at his place for a week during that time, worried that he wouldn't be taking care of himself.

The two stayed in their position for a while. Hizashi could feel his shirt getting wet as Shouta leaned against him taking shuddering breaths.

"I'm here for you, Shouta" Hizashi quietly murmured. "For what it's worth, your track record as an underground hero is amazing and it's only been a year since we graduated. You've saved countless people all while staying out of the spotlight. You're a hero in every sense of the word."

Shouta released another shaky breath, making a clear effort to restrain any sounds from coming out of his throat.

"You're doing alright, Shouta. I promise," Hizashi continued. "Don't focus on what could have been. Focus on what you can do now, the things you can change."

He rubbed soothing circles against his friend's back, quietly humming to fill the room with some kind of noise. Shouta's trembling body gradually relaxed, his hand loosely clinging to Hizashi's shirt as his eyes drooped from exhaustion.

Hizashi eventually felt Shouta fall asleep against him, his breathing finally slow and even. Hizashi sighed, pulling Shouta down with him to lie on the couch, resting his friend's head against his chest in a more comfortable position.

The sun was already beginning to peak through his curtains. Hizashi hazily thought about how grateful he was that it was finally the weekend, giving him a few days to tend to his best friend.

Shouta might take some time to bounce back, but if it's anything like the times before, Hizashi was sure that he'd be dragged into many extra training sessions with the erasure hero. Hizashi didn't mind though. He truly loved this soft, diligent side of Shouta, a part of him that he kept hidden behind his usual apathetic façade.

Hizashi yawned. He closed his eyes as he passed out on the couch with Shouta in his arms, the two lying peacefully against one another in comfortable silence.


End file.
